"I wish we were back at my home", I said with such haste that I had forgotten to relieve the mermaid's moisture problem with the same wish.
Just as the ring had obeyed me before and had stripped the clothes from this woman, the space seemed to shift around us and only us until our surroundings was no longer a street and sidewalk but the inside of my rather modest home.
However, instead of being relieved just yet, the mermaid was simply transported to my living room where her rather large caudal fin flopped against the rug that she now sat on. She was at least relieved from the heat of the sun and the gazes of other people, though.
She grasped at her throat with her right webbed hand as she sounded like she was choking now with the sounds of gasping and panting escaping her parched lips. Her gills continued to open widely and close, trying desperately to breathe. Her eyes closed tightly and began to well up with tears.
She was obviously in a fair amount of pain from her lack of water. I couldn't stand to see such a beautiful creature suffer -- I suppose that was what some would have called chivalry.
I wasn't sure just yet if I was able to carry her or drag her to the bathtub, so I quickly ran to the kitchen and filled up a large glass of water, hoping that my fishy guest could hold on a bit longer.
While I got her some water, I could still hear the sound of her tail-fin flopping against the floor helplessly, quickening the pace of my heart and making it seem as if it was taking an eternity for the glass to fill up.
I decided to let her have a drink of water first before I tended to anything else she needed. Instead of waiting for her to grab the glass with one of her webbed hands, I placed the rim of the glass to her beautiful pink lips and tilted the glass forward, letting the cool water run down her parched throat.
She guzzled the water down as if it was nothing at all, though a few drops from the glass escaped from her lips and dripped onto her massive chest.
Even if it didn't help much, it did allow her to speak though instead of simply gasp and cough. She licked her lips softly after she had downed the large glass of water, opened her eyes, looked up at me with those delicate blue eyes and smiled at me with brilliant white teeth that seemed to add to the otherworldly charm that she already had.
"Thank you... but my scales still hurt..." She said before she looked down at her tail and began to rub at the scales on the right side of her thigh with her right hand. Her caudal fin continued to flop against the floor throughout all this. From what I could tell, this was a sort of involuntary action.
Thus began a relay of sorts where I took the empty glass back to the kitchen to fill it back up and bring it back to pour over a part of the mermaid's body. At the end of it all, I had a happy sopping wet mermaid, a ruined or at least very moist rug, and I had managed to tire myself out.
I was now the one panting as I sat down near her. "Are you all right now?," I asked, trying to be as polite as possible.
"Oh, yes, thank you very much," she said with a giggle while she rubbed the water into her now glistening skin and shimmering scales. Her caudal fin flopped about happily, producing a squishing sound each time it hit against the floor and especially the soaked rug. "It feels so good...," she said in such a way that it sounded like a contented sigh, while her eyes closed briefly.
"I bet it does," I said with a small smile on my face, despite the fact that I was still panting from the effort I had given to wet the mermaid down.
"By the way, what caused you to change to... well, this?," I asked, bringing my attention back to the confusing matter about how she had become to be a mermaid on the sidewalk earlier when I had simply wished that her clothes were gone.